FRIDAY OF THE ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIMW

June 18, 2021

2Cor 11:18, 21-30,

Ps 34:2-7,

Mt 6:19-23

OUR INTENTIONS IN LIFE

There’s a fundamental difference between what God values and what we value. We often value success, education, wealth, and other accomplishments. But our God values humility, obedience and weakness. God’s love and power were made known through humility, obedience and weakness. This is how we were saved. Here is when we know that we’ve understood the gospel well; when we stop boasting about our strengths and when we start embracing weakness, humility, and service; when we realize that the very thing that God may use most powerfully in our lives isn’t our strengths, but our suffering and weakness.

In our first reading, st Paul is urging us to Stop boasting in our strengths but rather, start to embrace our weaknesses and look for opportunities to give ourselves away in service to God and others. Always remembering that we are at our best when we get out of the way, when we’re not noticed, when we purge the clamoring ego from our soul, when we embrace our weakness and when we serve Jesus and others.

Our Gospel passage today offers us with an insight about the eye being the lamp of the body. St. Thomas claims that when speaking of the “eye” Jesus refers to man's intentions and “our whole body” refers to all of our actions that follow from our intention. Therefore, when our intentions are in line with God’s will, the actions that follow will be also in line with God’s will. This is a very practical and useful lesson for our journey toward holiness. With this insight, we must look at our intentions in an honest and complete way.

Our eyes are the doorway to our soul, if we are happy it shows in our eyes and if we are sad it also shows in our eyes. We may be able to hide our sad emotion but our eyes will eventually betray us for it will show the true emotions of our hearts. So how can we have ever glowing eyes that is full of happiness, contentment and serenity? The answer to this is very simple: we must store up treasures in heaven by means of doing good things to our fellowmen, by helping the poor in spirit and wealth and by sharing Jesus with them. By doing so we are already storing up true treasures in heaven where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.

Our earthly treasures can be: our many attachments, immediate comforts, the opinion of others about ourselves, our personal achievements, security, pride, fame, secularism and many more while Our heavenly treasures are those things that we treasure in our hearts the things that Jesus was doing, revealing and teaching to the disciples (Lk 2:19, 51).

It does not mean that we should not seek to have these earthly treasures, but let us use these earthly treasures as our starting point aiming the heavenly treasures. This is because even if we attain to have all these earthly treasures, we experience that our hearts are still empty if we have not yet known Jesus well. We need to meet the Lord in prayer, sacrament and the service of others so as to cast off our self-centeredness.

The primary intention that we should work to acquire therefore, is to give God the greatest glory possible in all that we do. Giving glory to God is accomplished when we choose Him and His holy will above everything else in life. When this is the deepest and most fundamental intention of our life, everything else will flow from it. All secondary intentions and actions will align with this central focus and work toward its accomplishment.

Dear Christian, today let us reflect upon the most fundamental intention we have in life. Doing so will require a considerable amount of interior reflection and honesty. It will require that we sort through the many things that motivates us and the decisions we make each and every day. Today we are called upon to realize the primary purpose of our life, which must be to give God the greatest glory possible by choosing and living His perfect will and always boasting in our weakness by giving the first priority to the things that bring us closer to God.

May God help us to seek first His kingdom and the rest will follow.